Once Upon A Time
by Unidentified Pie
Summary: She can feel her heart pounding like a war drum and she feels like she's going to explode, because they left her. Every single one of them left her and she couldn't do a damned thing; she stood there and watched them leave like a stupid little doll. (Kagura's childhood - being helpless and being left behind.)


_Abuto, don't you know? Rabbits die when they're lonely._

\- Kamui, Gintama

* * *

This is how Kagura's home once was:

Mami smiled and laughed (and her laugh was so beautiful, just like Mami), Papi stayed home and played, and Kamui taught Kagura everything she needed to know.

When it rained so hard the world was almost black, they huddled together beneath blankets, warm and dry and safe as lighting flashed through the skies. They told stories and Papi talked about the planets he'd seen, the aliens he'd defeated. Mami taught them to braid their hair and twisted Kagura's hair into buns while Kamui watched.

Mami cooked and her food was the very best, and everything was warm and good and kind.

But that was a long time ago.

-x-

Kagura stands quietly as her father leaves (again, and again, and again).

She's watched his retreating back a hundred million times, and it hurt a hundred million times. She will watch it another million times and it will hurt each of those times, too, but he's doing it for their good - he's said so. It's the only way to get Mami the medicine she needs, the only way to make sure they can still eat three meals a day.

We can eat one meal a day, Kagura told him once. Then you can come home more.

Papi smiled a smile that wasn't happy (his smiles are almost never happy), and he reached out to ruffle her hair. He suddenly looked very tired.

Everyone in her family does that. Kamui smiles when Kagura asks where he's going and Mami smiles when Kagura asks if she's getting better. Papi smiles when Kagura asks when he's coming back - he says "I will come back" but never ever tells her when he's actually going to do it and-

And they don't answer. They never do.

She curls her little hands into fists and stares at her father's back and she memorises it, because she's seen it more times than she's seen his face.

-x-

She wants to do something. Her heart aches and her chest screams and every fibre of her being wants to help - she can feel that desire itching beneath her fingers and scratching at her chest (please please please), but she can't.

Kamui tells her to stop being a nuisance (why is telling him to stop fighting and asking Papi to please stay because she's so lonely being a nuisance?) and Papi tells her that she needs to look after Mami (but she doesn't know how) and Mami tells her that Papi and Kamui need their space (why? Why would they want space instead of the warmth of their family, dammit?).

And it feels like she's a wild animal on lockdown - desperate but caged.

-x-

Kagura can't do anything, so she waits.

She presses her back against the cracked grey wall of their home and she waits for Kamui to come home, for Papi to come home, for Mami to wake up. She picks up a stick and chews on it until it's gnawed into tiny little pieces (just like the way her family is gnawed-at and falling apart at the seams and she pushes that thought away because that can't happen), and she watches the long hand of the clock tick its way in circles..

When she starts to cry, she buries her face in her knees and her shoulders heave in great gulping breaths and she feels like the only person in the whole, wide, thrice-damned world.

-x-

Papi and Mami and Kamui used to tell her bedtime stories - the traditional Yato stories, with a character that lost absolutely everything and went mad, and fought and fought and fought right to the death.

"Fought to the death with Death's own grin on his face," Kamui read, smiling a different smile than the one he wears now, soft and happy as he reached out to ruffle Kagura's hair.

Kagura never liked those stories.

Why, after losing everything, would you want to lose yourself?

-x-

Most Yato parents buy their children umbrellas, something like a coming-of-age ritual. But Papi is never ever home, and when he is he doesn't have the time to watch his children's skill and decide that they're good enough to get their first Yato weapons.

Instead, Yato come to their home to pick fight with the famed Umibouzu's children, and Kamui steps out of the house with a smile determinedly in place and his hand wrapped around a cheap, battered umbrella that he bought himself.

(That's how her stupid big brother learns to fight.)

-x-

Kagura didn't like the traditional Yato stories, so she made up new ones, like the ones Papi told her about - the ones from Earth, where stories start with "Once upon a time" and end with "and they lived happily ever after".

Papi smiled and Mami laughed behind one hand and Kamui gave her a look.

"You're weird," he said. "You're not born on Earth."

After Mami fell sick, Kagura leaned against Kamui's side and said that she liked her stories a lot better.

"Me too, little sister." Kamui's voice didn't catch like hers did. Kamui's voice was soft and serious and steady, just like Kamui. "Me too."

He started coming home with bruises beneath his sleeves and blood beneath his nails, hiding it beneath a smile plastered on like a band-aid.

Death's own smile, Kagura remembered, and she wondered if that's what Kamui was trying to do, if his smile was supposed to look scary and strong and fearless instead of patched-together with determination and teeth gritted against the pain.

Papi started leaving more often and Kagura sat alone at home and couldn't help but remember the stories, the traditional Yato ones, the ones that started with "A Yato lost everything" and ended with "fought to the death with Death's own smile on his face".

She feels like they're all going to leave her and she'll be that Yato that lost everything, and she doesn't want to end like that - she doesn't want to end it by fighting to the death and losing herself.

Instead, Kagura makes up new stories, the ones that start with "Once Upon a Time", where no one loses anything and there are magic potions and antidotes that will make the sickest people better if they just look hard enough.

Mami smiles and breathes fragile ratchety breaths and coughs blood onto her pale thin hand.

The story doesn't come true, no matter how much Kagura tries.

They're Yato. Yato never have happy endings. There are no "happily ever after"s, just blood and fighting and death.

-x-

And then everything shatters like glass. Except it's not like glass, not really, Yato are more destructive than that.

It tears apart, like Kamui and Papi took one end each and pulled with all their top-of-the-universe Yato strength, and it shredded apart like skin and muscles ripped right in two, blood splattering everywhere and guts soaking everything like they did the night Kagura tore Sadaharu apart with her own two hands.

Papi comes home and Kamui goes mad like the Yato in the stories, the Yato that lost it all. He loses to his Yato nature or maybe just teams up with it, and his eyes glow a furious, otherworldly blue. He launches himself towards his father and he's smiling, that stupid smile that started as a mask to stop Mami from worrying and is now a wall against the world, because he's scared too.

He's a damned coward but it's not like Kagura can talk. She was the one crying when they sat in the darkened hallways; Kamui was the one who put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close and did not say that Mami would be okay (because she probably won't be and they all know it, and the doctor's report on the dining table says scary things like "terminal illness" and "incurable" and "matter of time" and "priorities in order", and Kamui's face when he opened the mail and saw it today was an awful, awful thing).

Kamui was the one who went out whenever stupid other Yato decided that they wanted to challenge Umibouzu's children for sport. Kagura just hung back, hid behind her big brother, and cried.

And Kagura cries now, as her stupid big brother tears off their father's arm and gets punched in the face for it, Kagura cries and cries and cries as her big brother is beaten within an inch of his life and there's so much blood mixing with the rain, it looks like her room did the night she murdered Sadaharu.

She wants to do something, it's been so so long since she's been able to do anything that it's a shock that she can now.

Kagura runs across the blood-slick ground, throws herself in front of her stupid big brother the way Kamui always put himself in front of her ("Stay behind me, little sister, let me show you how it's done") and grabs her father's leg, the way she always wants to do when he leaves.

And then Kagura begs, because she's weak, in the fairytale and in real life. She's the weakest, littlest member, the runt of the litter, the weakest link and she's never been able to do anything worth shit. So she clings to her father and she cries and she begs (please please please).

She could be begging her father or she could be begging the world, she doesn't know and she doesn't care and she just wants it to stop. She doesn't want her brother to die and she especially doesn't want Papi to kill him.

She just wants her family back.

There's blood on everything, there's blood on her father and there's blood on her brother and there's blood on the streets, the walls, her raincoat, the whole damned world. There's blood on everything and there's blood everywhere and Kagura is just this little girl, this tiny little girl who's never been able to do a thing, and she stands in the rain in a puddle of crimson blood, she wraps her weak, tiny arms around her father's leg, and she begs.

Please please please pleasepleasepleaseplease. Stop it. Stop it. Don't kill my big brother. Don't kill Kamui-nii.

Please, please please.

Please, stop.

-x-

And Papi listens. For maybe the first time ever, Papi listens to her.

He stops and stumbles back with a horrified, shell-shocked look on his face, the same look Kagura saw in the mirror when she staggered into the toilet to wash Sadaharu's blood off her hands. He's shaking and she's shaking and they just stare at each other, and Kagura has tears in her eyes and her father's arm is lying at her feet, pale and white and soaked in blood.

Kagura reaches down and picks up her father's arm, and she almost drops it because it's cold and heavy (dead, like Kamui will be if she doesn't do something), but she digs her teeth into her lip and picks it up.

She won't be a coward anymore.

Kagura holds it out to her father, acutely aware of Kamui, her big brother, her stupid big brother, her dying big brother, bleeding out behind her.

"Papi," she says, and her voice is small and scared and lost. "Papi, help."

Her father stares at her, wide-eyed, still shaking, and he's got blood on his one remaining arm and blood pouring down his other side, turning the rain red.

He steps back, away from her, away from her brother away from their familyawayfromtheirlife.

"Papi," Kagura calls, voice small, thin desperateshaking. Everything runs together like the blood and the rain. "Help." (Don't leave me again.)

Papi steps back, and takes another step, and another. Kagura just stares at him, tears blurring her vision and heating her eyes as she watches him leave.

(Just as she's done a hundred million times before.)

-x-

Papi leaves and Kagura is all that's left, and she wants to stand and cry, but she can't afford that because Kamui is bleeding out behind her.

So she digs her teeth into her lip and her nails into her palms and she turns around, splashing across the bloody ground to fall to her knees beside her brother, and he's a bloody mess, he's barely breathing, and Kagura just wants to wail.

But she can't. She can't and she won't and she scrubs at her eyes furiously with the back of one hand, pushes her brother onto his back to see how bad he's hurt. He's got blood all over him, and Kagura doesn't know what's his and what's not.

He cracks open one bright blue eye. "Stupid little sister," he hisses. Kagura's eyes are still wet with tears and her hands are shaking as she runs them over his chest, searching for wounds. "What did you get in the way for?"

"Did you want to die?" Kagura runs her hands over his ribs and feels him twitch. Broken, then.

Kamui shuts his eyes. "You're so stupid," he says.

Kagura just finds an open wound on his torso - left by their father's umbrella; she feels sick - and presses her hands on it, trying to stop the blood. "I don't care."

"That's why you're so dumb."

Kagura doesn't respond, and Kamui seems content to keep his eyes shut. It's almost peaceful, even with the icy rain pelting her back and running down Kamui's face like the endless stream of tears he never shed.

"Papi left," Kagura says eventually. She feels like someone opened up a great big hole inside her, black and empty and leaving her all hollow.

"Good riddance." He doesn't look happy. He just looks tired.

"You're such an idiot," Kagura says, pressing down on his wounds. "Stupid, stupid Kamui-nii."

-x-

Kamui goes out to fight (more and more and more) and comes back with blood on his clothes and bruises on his knuckles.

He smiles big and wide for Mami and hides his hands behind his back, and he lies and he lies and he lies.

Kamui's scared, too. Kagura's not stupid. She saw the look in his eyes when Papi almost killed him and the way his hands shake when he clasps them behind his back. She sees the way he leaves the house like everything and anything is better than this place.

(His eyes are dull when they're not shining with anger, and his face is tired and frustrated when he's not hiding behind that stupid, stupid smile.)

Kamui has always been the fighter, the one who fights off the violent Yato and the one who keeps them safe - yet he can't fight off sickness and Kagura knows that it scares him.

It scares her, too. But she's always been helpless. She couldn't make Papi stay or Kamui stop fighting or Mami get well. She couldn't stop their fighting or save their father's arm or make it so that the bone-deep horror in Kamui's eyes never appeared.

Kamui is used to having something to fight, to crush, to defeat. Kagura's used to not being able to do anything and trying anyway.

That's why Kamui goes out to fight and that's why Kagura stays. And that's why they both call each other idiots, because Kagura knows that beating people up won't make Mami better and Kamui knows that Kagura staying and trying won't do anything, either.

-x-

One day Kamui leaves. Kagura stands and watches him go, the way she always watched Papi leave. (He hasn't come back since that day and Kagura thinks he never ever will.)

She wants to tell Kamui to stay, to stop leaving her alone, to try just a little harder and have a little more hope.

Instead she says: "You're leaving Mami?"

You're leaving me?

"Get lost, I have no use for weaklings."

Kagura wants to ask him: are you talking to me or to yourself, you stupid big brother?

He's smiling that smile again, and Kagura wants to ask him: Do you think you're like the Yato in the stories? Do you think that's Death's own smile? Do you know that your little sister isn't stupid?

She can see right through it.

(He hasn't lost everything yet. He hasn't lost her. Doesn't that matter?)

Kagura blinks back the tears in her eyes and stops them from spilling down her cheeks, and she watches him leave the way she always watched Papi.

It's easy to memorise Kamui's back. It looks just like Papi's always did.

-x-

Papi doesn't come back and Kamui doesn't come back and Mami's practically stopped smiling (fake smiles don't count, and fake smiles are all she's getting). Kagura feels cold and empty, just like her house (house, not home. Home is warm), and she wants the warmth back.

She cooks and cleans, instead, and when more Yato come for fights she takes a leaf out of Kamui's book; steps out with her hand wrapped around Mami's old umbrella (but no smile on her face).

She struggles and she gets her face smashed into puddles and her stomach kicked and bruises all over her body, and the Yato leave with disgusted looks on their faces and disappointment in their eyes.

She doesn't stay down.

Kagura grits her teeth and fists her hands and blinks down the tears in her eyes, and she gets up.

Kagura gets up every single time, and maybe someday someone will tell her that that's a sort of strength, too.

She limps into the house and changes her clothes and bandages her bleeding head, and she makes dinner with stuttering breaths shuddering from broken ribs and hands shaking with pain and exhaustion.

Mami looks at her with worry in her eyes and Kagura grits her teeth. "Don't worry," Kagura says. "I am strong. I am Papi's daughter and Kamui's little sister, aren't I?"

That's what all the Yato say when they come to challenge her. Umibouzu's daughter, and the little sister of that batshit insane kid that took his father's arm off, the littlest member of the craziest, strongest Yato family.

She's a disappointment. Kagura fists her bruised, scratched-up hands and grits her teeth against the humiliation, and she looks at her mother and says that she won't be weak and little forever.

"Oh, Kagura," her mother says, voice a sigh, and it's like disappointment and Kagura can't stand it, she doesn't know what to do, she's seven years old and she's trying her best but no one seems to give a flying- "I'm sorry."

Kagura's chest is heaving and she's got tears in her eyes, but she whips her head up anyway because why, why would apologise to the stupid little disappointing mess-up who couldn't save her father or her brother and who can't beat the Yato and can't help her Mami?

"Why?" Kagura asks. Mami just touches Kagura's bruised, burning cheek (gently, so gently).

"You shouldn't have to do this."

"Yes I do," Kagura says. "I am yours and Papi's daughter and Kamui's little sister."

Mami just strokes a cool hand across Kagura's face and uses a thumb to rub the tears from Kagura's eyes. "You don't have to be like them. You're strong already."

"I am not strong enough." Kagura sits seiza and keeps her back straight and fists her hands on her lap. "I will be stronger."

Mami sighs and cards gentle fingers through Kagura's hair.

"You have your own strength, can't you see that, Kagura-chan?"

Kagura can't. All she's good at is making rice and pouring toppings on it and watching people leave - all she's good at is crying and getting beaten into puddles and trying even when there's no damn hope.

"What use is my strength," she asks Mami, "when I can't save anyone?" When I can't save you?

Mami smiles her beautiful serene smile.

"It's not too late to save them."

-x-

Kagura doesn't stay weak and little forever.

She grows taller, tall enough that she doesn't need to stand on tiptoes to look out the window, and she grows stronger. It starts with her landing more than one pathetic punch on the older Yato, and it grows into something more.

Most Yato children are given umbrellas by their parents. But Kagura's father is the Umibouzu and she won't be strong enough in his eyes for a long time, and Mami isn't well enough to leave the house, so Kagura follows in Kamui's footsteps and buys herself her own weapon.

It is heavy in her hands, but Mami's was heavier. She trains with it, and she makes herself better day by day. Sometimes even when she's beaten into the puddles and her ribs throb and her head screams, her opponents don't look at her with disgust or horror or disappointment, and sometimes they even tell her that she fought well.

But that's not enough. Kagura doesn't want to fight well, she wants to win.

-x-

Kagura's beaten into the ground again; she struggles to her knees and swipes blood from her eyes and glares at the female Yato, lips pulling from her teeth in a snarl, and she digs her umbrella into the rubble and hauls herself right back up, just as she's done a hundred million times before.

"You have a good look in your eyes," the Yato says, a note of almost-approval in her voice. "With practice you could be something."

And Kagura shifts her feet to fall into a defensive stance and spits blood onto the dusty ground. She glares at the Yato, blood pouring down her face and shaking hands clenched so damn tightly around her umbrella she thinks the handle's gonna break.

"I am already something," she snarls, low and tight and fierce.

Then she charges, and she swings her umbrella and she swings her fists, and when she's knocked down she gets up and gets up and gets up, and she doesn't stop.

She's got a damn lot of practice getting the hell up.

And this time she's got blood running down her face and sweat stinging her eyes, and her head screams and her ribs throb, but she's the one standing and her opponent is lying beaten and bloody in a puddle, and Kagura feels fiercely, fiercely proud.

-x-

Mami dies.

One morning Kagura walks into her room and reaches out and Mami's skin is cold, the way Papi's dead arm was, and no matter how many times Kagura calls (small voice wobbling and thin and wavering and desperately scared), Mami's eyes don't open.

She tries to hold Mami's hand, but the fingers are cold and stiff and Kagura remembers a lesson Kamui taught her a few years ago, about how people go stiff after they die-

-the first tears prickle in her eyes and her chest is very cold and empty. "Mami," she says, and then her voice cracks and she dissolves into begging. "Please wake up, you're okay, Mami, wake up. This isn't funny, it's not funny-"

Her voice cracks and breaks wide open, just like how her world feels cracked right in two. "It's not funny," she says, and her voice goes long and thin, "Please, please, please. Mami."

She leans forward and presses her face against her dead mother's chest, the way she used to lie across her for a hug before bed.

Beneath her clothes, Mami's skin is cold.

"Please," Kagura says, tears wetting Mami's shirt and hands fisting Mami's clothes. "Don't leave me alone."

Mami doesn't answer.

(No one ever does.)

-x-

Burial procedures are amazingly fast.

It makes sense, on this planet of fighting and death. Within a few hours the burial is managed; Kagura is the only one who attends.

She stands and watches her mother lowered into the earth, fisting her hand by her side and clutching her umbrella in a white-knuckled grip. Her chest is so tight, and when she inhales it's shuddering and weak. She thinks hollowly that Papi should be here, or Kamui. She thinks that the littlest, weakest member of the family shouldn't be the one who finds their mother dead and arranges the funeral, and that there should be more people here with her.

She doesn't want to go back to that empty, lonely house - she wants to go back in time to when Mami smiled and Papi was around and Kamui was the big brother who laughed when she teared up at spilling a bottle of milk ("Haven't you heard? You don't cry over spilled milk, stupid little sister. You clean up the mess and buy more before anyone notices.").

She wants to go back home, but home doesn't exist anymore.

-x-

She's walking back to the house when the three Yato step into her path.

"You're her, aren't you?" One of them asks, towering over her. "Umibouzu's daughter?"

"That's her," one of the others says. "I saw her with her father once. She's the one that beat Kiyomi."

Kagura just stares up at them, utterly silent, feeling washed-out and tired.

Those stupid big Yato, with their big smiles and bright blue eyes who find it fun to beat up a little girl just because her father's really strong. Who made Kamui keep fighting and who kept pounding her into the stupid ground and who won't just give her a thrice-damned break.

Mami is dead. No one's at home. It's not even home anymore, just a stupid little house with no one in it but tiny useless little Kagura-chan who watched Papi leave and watched Kamui leave and watched Mami die.

She's so tired of this. She's so tired that she wants to be physically sick.

Her whole life has been wanting to do something and doing something else instead, and Kagura is sick of it. She's sick of being trapped and caged and useless and she's sick of watching and watching and watching and _not doing anything_.

She can feel her heart pounding like a war drum and she feels like she's going to explode, because they left her, every single one of them left her and she couldn't do a damned thing, she stood there and watched them leave like a stupid little doll.

She's sick of it. She's sick of helplessness.

So when the Yato step forward for a fight, Kagura smiles, big and wide and mad. The tears are still hot in her eyes but when they fall to trace lines down her cheeks she feels it, that sharp clean snap and click inside her, and she settles into madness.

(I'm so tired of being weak. I'm so tired of being the world's toy.)

An insane laugh bursts from her lips.

(A Yato lost everything-)

-x-

Those are her first and last kills. (She will not do that again. She will never do that again.)

Here's the worst thing: she enjoyed it. She loved the madness and giving into the fury.

She's tired, that's all. She's tired of pushing it down and being sweet and healing and kind when nothing ever works, and she's so sick of doing nothing.

Kagura loved the insanity because everything was right and good and instinct is a beautiful thing, it made the timing and movements perfect because she just knew how to do it, she knew what to do.

That's more than can be said for most of her thrice-damned life.

She enjoyed it, and she can't even pretend that the laughter wasn't hers because it was, because it felt so good to let everything out and to have that easy, easy battle where all she had to do it hit the right spots to win, where the opponent was something she could hit and crush and cut.

It was so much easier than trying to make Papi stay or trying to make Kamui be safe or make Mami better. She could do it when she couldn't do anything else and that, that was what it's like to be a Yato and Kagura loved it. The thrill of the fight and the blood pounding through her veins and the instinct telling her what exactly to do and the smile stretching wide wide wide across her face.

Nothing hurt.

Then it's over and her blood is cooling and the rain on the ground is red and oh, she's killed them. There's guts in the puddles and there are torn-off limbs lying around her and the three Yato are staring at the sky with glassy empty eyes.

And then she's not Yato anymore, she's just little Kagura with blood on her hands and blood on her face and she's helpless again, she can't go back she can't fix it she can't make them come back to life.

She bits her lip so hard she draws blood and her chest heaves, shoulders shuddering.

This. This is Yato strength. It's the same, the same as when she killed Sadaharu, the same as when Papi and Kamui fought. It's exactly the same.

This is Yato strength: blood everywhere and on everything and madness in blue eyes and running away from reality for a few minutes to escape the pain, and waking up to dead bodies and a ruined world.

Kagura feels tears in her eyes and her stomach rolls and she doesn't want this, she doesn't want to be a Yato. If this is strength then she doesn't want to be strong.

Her knees buckle and hit the wet ground and there's cold rain seeping in through her pants and she's shaking; she presses her trembling hands against the blood-tainted rain-wet ground and breathes shaky, wobbling breaths, trying not to retch.

Maybe the people she just killed (murdered) were other children's fathers or brothers. Maybe she just left little children alone in the world without fathers or brothers because she took them away, tore them away with her selfish, selfish hands.

She opens her mouth and gasps in a desperate, desperate breath, and this has to be a nightmare, it has to be, soon she'll wake up with clean hands and Mami still alive and everything will be okay.

Wake up, she tells herself, and she pinches her forearm hard enough that her nails break skin, but no matter how much she wills it away she can feel the sting of pain and this is real, this is real, she just murdered-

-the smell of iron and defecation forces its way up her nose and her stomach rolls. She gags, stomach heaving, then her breakfast burns up her throat and spills from her mouth.

She looks down at her hands and they're smeared with blood and little lumps of tissue and there's someone's flesh stuck beneath her nails and Kagura wants to scream.

She cries instead, kneeling on the ground and shaking, cries so hard that she can't see, that everything is breath and ragged gasps ripped out of her lungs to tear the air in two, and she can't she can't she can't.

But she has.

-x-

She goes home and it's cold and there's no one breathing but her, and there no one to hear when she cries.

There's no one to hear when she wakes up at night screaming, blood and ripped-apart people and dirty hands playing out behind her eyes. Maybe Kagura's glad about that, that she doesn't have to see the disappointment and worry on Mami's face or hear Kamui tell her that she's too weak or see the gruff tired look on Papi's face that will remind her that he kills monsters all the time so she should grow the hell up.

Maybe she wants them to be here, so that she can curl into Mami's kind warmth and feel Kamui's arm around her shoulder ("Jeez, little sister, if you hate it so much let me do it for you, stupid") and hug Papi's waist and feel him strong and warm and there.

But they're gone either way and she's alone, so Kagura pulls herself out of bed and runs water over her hands until they turn wrinkly and pink, then she crawls back under her blankets and curls up against the cold.

I'm scared, Kagura wants to say.

Instead (because she always always has to do something instead, look what happened when she finally did what she wanted), she bites her lip hard and shuts her eyes and wills the bloody scene and the sick feeling away.

-x-

The clock goes tick tick tick and she's tired, she's so tired, and there's this squeezed-up hurting feel in her stomach.

Mami's dead. Papi's gone. Kamui's gone. Home isn't home anymore.

Kagura is all alone.

Yato come to challenge her - Umibouzu's daughter, they say, the batshit insane kid's sister.

And now some of them add "killed three Yato", "went crazy", "her father's daughter".

Kagura fights them off desperately, clinging to herself - don't kill don't kill don't kill - and she's beaten and bloody by the end, leaning against her umbrella like it's a crutch, but she stands over their limp bodies - the victor.

Her breaths echo harsh and ragged across a quiet grey street.

She's won, but Kagura doesn't feel proud at all.

-x-

Papi comes home and this time Kagura isn't waiting outside the house - she's sitting on the living room floor when he comes in, knees drawn up to her chest and arms wrapped around her legs.

"Mami's dead," she says, and she doesn't look up at his face, just stares at the grey floor and her raggedy, worn shoes. For a moment she can't even hear him breathe, and he doesn't say anything for a long time. Kagura's sick of silence, though, so she eventually says "She died three weeks and two days ago. Her body's at the cemetery."

I was the one who buried her, Kagura doesn't say. I was the one who made the arrangements. Instead, she says "You'd better like what I put on the gravestone, 'cause it's a pain to change it."

Papi sighs heavily, umbrella thudding against the floor. Footsteps tump on the floor and then he's settling beside her, warm and strong.

Kagura presses her face into her knees. "You stink," she says.

"What, your father works so hard to earn money for you and that's the first thing you say?"

"I don't need the money. Mami and big brother aren't around anymore, so you can go out less." She hugs her legs tighter. "Stay with me." I'm lonely.

"Didn't we have a deal?"

You look after your mother and I'll earn the money.

But Kagura failed her end of the deal. Mami died.

"Can I come with you?" She grits her teeth and stares hard at the ground. "Mami isn't around anymore."

"It's too dangerous."

"I killed three Yato."

Papi is quiet for a long time. She can feel his stare on her.

"That's nothing," he says eventually, and maybe he's trying to be comforting - that's nothing compared to what I've done, it's okay - but it doesn't help.

"You suck."

-x-

She's all alone and Kagura is sick of it.

She's sick of coming home to an empty house and sick of feeling cold and lost and empty. She's tired of waiting for people who won't come home.

If they aren't coming back, she thinks, then she'll just have to go to them.

It's a surprisingly easy decision to make. Kagura has had it with being the stupid little weakling who can't do anything, who's left behind and forgotten and dismissed as too small, too weak, always falling short of being good enough.

Clothes go into her bag and her umbrella goes on her shoulder, and when she thinks of where to go it's a surprisingly easy decision as well.

She'll go to Earth, of course.

She'll go to Earth and earn money and get stronger, and instead of being on this useless little planet where everyone fights each other for fun she'll join Papi to fight aliens and make the universe a better place. She'll get stronger, and she'll find her stupid big brother - Papi always leaves and Mami is gone, but Kagura won't lose next time - she'll grab him by the collar of his shirt and haul him back to their planet and make him pay his respects to Mami (because he's a coward, and he hasn't yet, not as far as Kagura knows).

She visits her mother's grave one last time, and then she leaves the planet.

-x-

And then she gets to Earth and she can't believe it.

She's standing beneath bright blue skies and there are people walking around who don't look sad or scared or ready for a fight. This is the land of blue skies and fresh air and "happily ever afters".

Except it's not.

She needs to earn money, but all she can reasonably do is fight. So she ends up with a bunch of perm-headed men who feed her good food (haha, something other than rice and toppings, and she's not the one cooking), and they ask her to fight.

And Kagura thinks it's the same.

She shoots at people with her umbrella and on Earth there's rarely puddles to beat people into, but Kagura's gotten stronger.

She can pound people into the pavement instead.

The men laugh and cheer and it's the same - it's exactly the same as before.

Kagura looks at her hands and she sees Kamui's hands, with the bruised bloody knuckles and the blood beneath her nails, and her chest heaves because this wasn't supposed to be what happened.

She wasn't supposed to become like her brother.

-x-

It's not any different. Earth is like her home planet, and Kagura-

-Kagura is still scared. She didn't come to beat others up for no good reason - she didn't come to do the same thing as before. She's scared of how easy it is, to hurt others for no reason she can think of, how easy it is to feel the endless stream of bones breaking and splintering beneath her fisted hands.

She doesn't want to be like this. She doesn't want to hurt people.

She wants her parents and her brother. She wants to be safe and happy and warm and together.

It's not raining, but Kagura feels cold.

She wants to go home.

(But home doesn't exist anymore. Just like how Mami isn't around anymore.)

She grits her teeth and doesn't cry. Crying is for weaklings who have homes and parents to go to. Crying is for stupid little girls who actually believed that just because there were blue skies on a different planet "once upon a time"s and "happily ever after"s existed.

(That little girl died under Kagura's fists. Kagura-chan was pounded into the pavement with every man she beat up, and bled out on the grey stones the way Kagura never did.)

-x-

Kagura draws the line when they ask her to take a life.

She's taken a life before, dammit, and she won't do that again. Instead, she fists her hands and glares at them and tells them that she won't. She won't kill.

And she's tired of fighting, so when they start to advance she takes the first chance she gets to run, kicking a guy in the face and sinking her fist into a man's solar plexus before bolting.

Then someone shoots her in the shoulder and that hurts, skin and flesh tearing in two and warm blood soaking her sleeve. Black spots cloud her vision for a moment and she runs blindly, out into the street, and there's someone screaming at her to watch out. She looks up to see a scooter and silver hair before it slams into her, hard, knocking the wind from her body and making her shoulder scream and filling her vision with black.

She wakes up on the back of the scooter, and there's people screaming behind her and the guy in front of her is screaming, and she realises that the two idiots on the scooter picked her up and they're hightailing it away from the stupid perm-headed men behind her.

It's the first time anyone outside of her family has ever come close to fighting for her.

-x-

The silver-haired man leaves and Kagura thinks she should be used to it, that's how things work on this world and everywhere else. You make a mess, you clean it up. She smiles and says she's used to it, because she should be used to it by now, but that boy with the glasses stays and Kagura thinks she likes him - he's kind.

They almost get run over by a train and Kagura wants to apologise - I'm sorry, you helped me and I got you killed - but then that silver-haired man comes back - riding beside the train on his scooter, of all things - and he looks absolutely fearless.

They beat up the rest of the gang members together, and this time Kagura stands over them with fierce satisfaction and the beginnings of hope in her chest.

The boy and the man sit at the station with her while she shaves off the stupid perms those men were so proud of.

She still wants to leave, she still wants to go home.

But home doesn't exist anymore.

So when the train arrives and they tell her to go, she tells them that she doesn't have the money. She could just cling to the train, but she won't, because the man with the silver hair and the boy with the glasses are kind and they saved her and they aren't scared of her.

If she wants things to get better, she thinks she'll have to stay with them for a bit.

When they protest, she slams her fist into the wall, cracking the plaster, and she looks into their eyes.

The man with the silver hair makes a vaguely anxious-looking expression, but there's no fear in his dull eyes. The boy with the glasses looks somewhat concerned, but she can't find fear in his eyes, even as bits of plaster fall into his hair.

She stays.

-x-

The first time Shinpachi calls her "Kagura-chan", Kagura stops and stills, because Kagura-chan died on cold grey pavement and bled out into unending rain.

(She hasn't been called a child for a long time.)

The first time she tells Gintoki to stop treating her like a brat, she's an adult (Kagura-chan is dead), Gintoki just gives her a long, measured look that suddenly makes her feel very small.

"You look like a brat to me," he says, and she can't find it in herself to disagree. "Don't get all high and mighty on me, oi."

And the first time she wakes up trying to muffle a scream after dreaming about blood on her hands and three ripped-apart Yato and staring, accusing eyes, she gets out to go to the bathroom, only to find Gintoki sitting right outside her closet, leaning against the wall and reading JUMP.

"Shinpachi bought sukonbu today," he says idly, flipping a page. "Forgot to tell you earlier."

She goes to the kitchen instead of the toilet, sits beside Gintoki instead of standing at the sink, and chews on sukonbu instead of trying to wash the memory of blood from her shaking hands.

She falls asleep and she wakes up covered by a soft blanket, curled up by Gintoki's side with her head pillowed on his outstretched hand, and she feels like a child again.

-x-

The first time Gintoki doesn't come back at night she feels the pinch of terror in her gut, feels loneliness twist her stomach into loops and knots and twists. She wakes up in the darkness of night (alone, alone alone), doesn't dare to get out of the closet to wash the remembered blood from her hands because it's too dark and empty out there for one lone girl (Kagura-chan, because Kagura-chan came back to life, because Kagura-chan never knew how to give up, because Kagura-chan stood up every single time. Because Kagura-chan heard Shinpachi and Gintoki and hauled herself right back up to be theirs).

She finds him on the entryway floor the next morning, piss drunk, and she feels her stomach unwind so slowly she wants to collapse to her knees.

She drags him to his bed instead, throws a blanket over him and tells him that he's an idiot - he's too drunk to understand, so she sighs and turns to go.

"Sorry," Gintoki slurs, and Kagura doesn't know if he's talking to her or the ghosts in his past, the ghosts that make him jerk awake in the middle of the night. She crawls into his bed and presses against him anyway, because if he's not talking to her then he's talking to things far more dangerous, and sometimes the only way to chase away the ghosts is to have a warm, living person to chase them away for you.

-x-

They run into a man with long hair who calls Gintoki the Shiroyasha and talks about the war, and somehow that explains Gintoki's ghosts, the ones that make him flinch awake in the middle of the night.

Kagura asks about it later and Gintoki's eyes darken, one hand curling into a fist.

"I killed a lot of people, brat," he says at last, looking out of the window at the blue skies. "I did a lot of shitty things."

"I killed Yato," Kagura says, and Gintoki turns back, really looks at her with that too-dark gaze that makes her think of his nickname and the war.

"I did worse," he says, and maybe he's trying to comfort her, but it doesn't work.

A few days later she plops onto the couch beside him and feels him twitch when her side slams against his, though his eyes stay firmly fixed on his JUMP.

Kagura wonders if he ever thinks about the people he killed, if he ever thinks about their families and the fact that he killed so many people's fathers and brothers and sons. She wonders if he ever stares at his hands and tries to wash away the remembered blood until his hands are pink and his fingers are raw.

Kagura looks down at the floor. "How do you do it?"

"What? Read JUMP? Oi, if you don't know how to do that-"

"How do you make it go away?" Kagura swallows. "The blood?"

"Wash your hands."

"I tried. It doesn't work, stupid Gin-chan."

Gintoki sighs and finally closes his manga, setting it aside. "How many?"

"Three," Kagura grits out, and compared to what he's done three is absolutely nothing, but maybe she just ruined three whole families and it doesn't make her feel any better to think about what Gintoki's done.

"That's not a lot," Gintoki says, and Kagura feels her heart sink, because maybe he just doesn't get it- "But it feels like three damn worlds, doesn't it?"

She shouldn't have underestimated Gin-chan. He always gets it.

Kagura sinks her teeth into her lip and nods. "I deserve it," she says. She does, she killed them, it was her own damn fault.

But she still wants this dirty, ugly feeling to go away. It's weak and cowardly and she's awful, she knows that, but she can't bear it.

"Don't be stupid, brat." Gintoki puts his hand on her head, carefully, like he's expecting her to push it away. When Kagura doesn't, he cards fingers through her hair, slow and gentle. "You can't go back. But you can stop it from happening again."

It's not enough. She still remembers their blood drying sticky on her hands and their guts on her clothes and the way their eyes had stared wide and lifeless and terrified at the grey skies and she still wants to be sick.

She shuts her eyes and leans against Gintoki's side. "Make it go away," she says, trying to make it sound like an order, but her voice wavers and she gulps, hard. "How do you make it go away?"

She feels Gintoki's ribs heave in a sigh. "Brat," he says, "I'm different."

Kagura doesn't say anything. A few hundred should be a lot harder to handle than three, so maybe if she can just be like him, it'll go away.

Gintoki sighs again, relaxing in something like resignation. "Didn't you learn anything about me these few days?"

"Those stories weren't about you." Kagura can't reconcile the demon of the stories with Gin-chan, gruff soft-hearted Gin-chan who took her in and let her keep Sadaharu and fights until he's bloody and beaten to keep them all safe. Who drinks strawberry milk and reads comic books and pulls stupid shit like the world's biggest kid.

"They were, a little. Anyway, it doesn't matter. You don't need to worry about that here."

"Huh?"

"Leave it behind. There's nothing you can do about it, anyway. And do you really think any of the idiots here care that you killed a Yato or two?"

Three, Kagura wants to say, but she swallows it down.

"But-"

"Look. The Shinsengumi? I bet they killed more than three people each."

"You don't know-"

"I know the look. Bastard tried to kill me, once. Shinpachi wouldn't care - he still puts up with me, and if he doesn't mind the damn Shiroyasha he won't care about three measly little kills. Hell, anyone who hangs out with me ain't gonna run at three kills, brat."

"But I killed them," Kagura says plaintively. Even if she's accepted, they're still dead, and their families will still mourn, and she was- "I was laughing, you know, Gin-chan? I was smiling and laughing and I was having fun."

"After they died?"

Kagura shakes her head and pushes it against his hakama in silent plea. Please don't leave. "While I killed them."

And there. There. Now Gintoki knows that she's a monster and she's a Yato and she's an awful creature-

"That's it?"

Kagura blinks and looks up at Gintoki. He looks almost bored.

He touches a hand to his mouth absently, frowns, and Kagura wonders if he was smiling sometimes, when he killed the enemy soldiers. "You lost to your Yato instincts, right?"

Kagura nods.

"So? It's your damn instincts - it wasn't you. Squish 'em and get on with your life. It wasn't you who enjoyed killing. It was your instincts." He sighs down at her. "Didn't you say it yourself? Fight against your Yato blood. That's all there is to it."

"I killed them," Kagura says, "I ruined their families." It's not so easy, dammit.

"I know." Gintoki sighs. "It's not easy, is it?"

Kagura just shakes her head. She can still remember the blood drying cold on her forearms and the shredded bodies and the crimson puddles. She thinks, when Gintoki lurches awake at night and stumbles downstairs to get a drink, that he still remembers it too.

Gintoki cards gentle fingers through her hair.

"I don't know," he says eventually. "I don't know how to make it go away."

Kagura bites her lip and tries to will the sick cold feeling inside her away.

"We'll do it together," Gintoki says. "We'll find a way together."

And suddenly she feels just a little warmer. She smiles and leans against him.

"Okay."

-x-

And then Gintoki forgets.

Gintoki _leaves_ , just like Papi, just like Kamui, just like Mami, and Kagura feels like the world is shattering beneath her feet and her heart is crumbling into tiny little pieces.

She's memorised her Papi's back, and Gintoki's back is just like it.

And she can't, she can't, she can't. She can't watch her family fall apart because that isn't what was supposed to happen, the fairy tales on earth all end with "happily ever after" and Gin-chan and Shinpachi were supposed to be different, the first people who stayed, the first people who told her it was okay not to grow up just yet.

But Gintoki leaves, and Shinpachi goes home, and Kagura is left alone (again, all over again).

And just like she's always done, Kagura goes back to the cold apartment and sits with her back pressed against a cracked wall.

She waits.

-x-

They're not Yato and this isn't her home planet. This is Earth, and they are different. This is different.

Shinpachi isn't stupid like Kamui, or maybe he's stupider than Kamui will ever be. He comes back the way Kamui never did, holds on to hope and faith the way her big brother couldn't.

("Stupid little sister. Why do you keep trying to do things you can't do?")

("Because maybe one day I'll be able to do them.")

When some jerks try to shoot a damned cannon at Gintoki, Kagura wraps her hand around her umbrella and steps up to protect him the way he stepped up to protect her, and when their friends form a line in front of him Kagura feels fiercely, fiercely proud for no reason she can think of.

(Look, stupid big brother. I could do something. I did something.)

Kagura loves Earth, where everyone holds on to hope even when it's stupid, where everyone tries even when they're told to give up.

Where they get up and get up and get up every single time they fall, and they don't care that you've tripped and ended up face-flat in the dirt as long as you pull yourself right back onto your feet.

It's a planet of trying when it seems pointless and hoping beyond hope. It's also a planet of miracles and happily ever afters, and Kagura can't be the only one who connects the two.

Maybe she's wrong, but she could just as well be right, because all of them stand together, a line of idiots knowing that there's nothing they can do and trying anyway. Gintoki remembers, and he comes back the way Papi never did, and as they walk back to the Yorozuya (to their home), it's like their very own happily ever after.

Kagura smiles big and wide and bright, and it's not faked like her stupid brother's, it's not faked at all.

-x-

This is how Kagura's home is now:

Shinpachi nags and cleans, Gintoki picks his nose, and Papi visits only slightly less frequently than he used to. The skies are blue and the stories start with "Once upon a time"s and end with "happily ever after"s, and no matter how many times they get cut or hurt, no matter how much they lose, the people of Kabuki-cho get up and get up and get up - they teach her that that, too, is a form of strength. When it rains Kagura and Gintoki watch TV at blaring volume or huddle together with Shinpachi doing normal people stuff, normal family stuff, which is all they ever really wanted anyway.

And everything is good and warm and kind - Kagura is home.

* * *

 **A/N: Inspired by heroesneedalancer's meta! Go find her on tumblr and click on her metas and read them. They are amazing.**

 **I'm sorry if this story is too draggy. I wanted to put a lot of things into it so it came out like this... Ugh. I hope you guys liked it; please let me know what you think?**

 **God bless! Merry Christmas!**


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